The questions attorneys ask before they book.

Answer engine optimization (AEO) for law firms is the work of making a firm one of the names AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Gemini and Copilot return when a prospective client asks for a lawyer. It overlaps with SEO in its inputs (your site, your profiles, your reviews, your mentions) but is measured differently: not where a page ranks, but how often the assistant names you across a set of real client questions. Firm AEO measures that as an appearance rate and reports it monthly.

They describe the same discipline from different angles. AEO (answer engine optimization) focuses on being the answer an assistant gives. GEO (generative engine optimization) is the academic term from the 2023 Princeton study on influencing generative search. AI SEO is the industry shorthand. Firm AEO uses AEO because the deliverable is being named in the answer, and because the guarantee is written against that.

Same inputs, different outputs. A firm can sit at the top of the local map pack and never appear in a ChatGPT answer, and most of the pages assistants cite for legal questions do not rank on page one at all. The work overlaps with SEO; the target does not. We measure whether the engines name you, not where a page ranks.

No, and be suspicious of anyone who says it does. Google still shows your map listing for near-me searches, and Avvo and Justia still send calls. This is the layer above it: the questions people ask an assistant before they ever search a category, and the shortlist it hands back.

No, and any agency promising that is describing something they do not control. Assistant answers vary by phrasing, session and model version. What we can do, and guarantee, is make your firm one of the names the engines consistently return across an agreed set of real client questions.

We agree a set of around fifteen client questions at kickoff, in writing. Each month we run every question repeatedly across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews from clean sessions with the location set to your market, log every run whether or not you were named, and report the share of runs in which your firm or one of its attorneys appeared. Logging only the good runs would produce a number nobody could defend, so every run is on the record.

ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews are the three the guarantee is measured on, because they carry most of the volume today. We also capture Claude, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot in the monthly run so you can see the whole picture, and because the sources they read overlap heavily with the first three.

Because the answers move. Sources that get cited heavily one month drop off the next as models re-weight what they trust and as competing firms publish. A build that is not maintained decays, which is the honest reason this is a retainer and not a project.

You will see your baseline appearance rate in the first two weeks and movement usually starts in the second month, once new sources are indexed. Ninety days is where local coverage in your practice area is stable enough to defend. Statewide coverage typically follows around month six as the citation base compounds.

Heavily, and recency matters more than total count. A firm with forty reviews from the last year generally outperforms one with two hundred from four years ago. Assistants read review velocity as a signal that the recommendation is currently safe to make. We help you build a compliant, steady review cadence; we never write or incentivise reviews.

Both, because clients ask assistants for a lawyer, not a firm. Attorney-level entity work, meaning bar admissions, certifications, publications and matter history where your rules allow it, matters as much as the firm-level work, and it is usually the half that is missing.

It should not, and we build for that. Everything published under your name is reviewed against ABA Model Rule 7.1 and your state’s advertising rules before it goes live: no misleading claims, no unverifiable comparatives, no implied outcome guarantees, required disclaimers where your state needs them. Our guarantee is about visibility and our fee, never about case results. We are not a law firm and we do not give legal advice; we will flag anything we think needs your ethics counsel’s eye.

No. We never write reviews, pay for reviews, or incentivise them, because that violates both the platforms' terms and most states' advertising rules. What we do is build a compliant cadence: the right moment to ask, the right wording, and a process that makes it easy for a satisfied client to leave one. Review recency is one of the strongest signals assistants read, so the cadence matters more than a one-time push.

Only where your state allows it and only with the disclaimers your state requires. Several states restrict or condition the use of past results in attorney advertising. We check the rule for your jurisdiction before any matter history goes live, and where it is not allowed we build the entity record from credentials, publications and practice focus instead.

Yes. The method is the same; the compliance layer is different. Each provincial law society has its own advertising rules, CASL governs any electronic outreach, and Quebec's Law 25 adds privacy requirements. We apply those before anything goes live under a Canadian firm's name.

When you need signed matters this month. AEO is not a fast channel. If the firm needs intake volume now, paid search or LSAs are the honest answer and AEO is what you start alongside them, not instead of them. We will tell you that on the call if it is true.

Every profile, page and account stays in your firm’s name and on your billing. If you stop, you keep the assets. You just stop having someone maintain them.

No. One firm per practice area per market. Optimising two clients for the same answer would mean working against one of them, so once a firm signs for a practice area in a market, that slot is closed.

A monthly retainer, scoped on the first call against your practice area, your market and how many attorneys need entity work. There is no setup fee and no long-term lock-in beyond the 90-day guarantee window. We do not publish a rate card because the scope varies too much between a solo estate-planning practice and a forty-attorney litigation firm.

Access to your Google Business Profile and directory logins, a short call with each attorney whose entity we are building, and your ethics counsel's contact if you have one. Most of the work is ours. The one thing we cannot do without you is agree the query set, because it has to be the questions you actually want to win.